UK Charity Taps Blockchain Platform to Boost Trust in Donations

English Heritage, the U.K. charity that oversees the care of historical sites like Stonehenge and Hadrian’s Wall, is looking to blockchain as a way to develop new ways of interacting with donors.

The charity is partnering with the Giftcoin platform, which can be used to track donor payments from the time they have been gifted to when the funds are actually been spent.

English Heritage – one of several groups said to be working with the platform – raised £2.5 million (roughly $3.5 million) in donations between 2015 and 2016, according to statements.

The charity itself is relatively young, and was created when a non-departmental public body of the U.K. government of the same name was divided into two entities, the second of which is Historic England.

In an email to CoinDesk, English Heritage development director Luke Purser framed the move as one aimed at facilitating new ways to work with donors.

"As a new charity, we’re keen to explore innovative ways of engaging with the broadest audience of donors possible, and we’re keen to build relationships with donors based on trust and transparency – Giftcoin might be one way of helping us to do this," he said.

Giftcoin said in a statement that the technology will also be used with the aim of attracting millennial donors "in a digital age where trust, in charity and good causes, seems to be at an all-time low."

The company’s public token sale is currently underway, and it claims to have raised $1.27 million so far.

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